Monday, July 1, 2013

With allies like us...

This is a rather difficult post to write for me. We try to win people over with messages of equality for all, freedom from oppression, human dignity, and what not. We plead our allies to be on our side. We urge them to make black and white decisions by saying "either you're with us or you're against us". We talk about a global coalition for good. Our allies stand by us and lift the heavy responsibility alongside us. What do we give them in return? We stab them in the back, repeatedly.

Every generation has a choice to make. We cannot rest on the laurels of the previous generation which frankly, there are none. I'd argue have to go back two generations to see anything we would be proud of today. With all the flawed leadership of the previous generation though they were still capable of outrage. This is something clearly missing from the current generation. Complacency is the new normal. I can't blame those in power either because clearly it is our fault for not keeping them in check. Our world is so increasingly complex that we tend to live in little silos with music from our huge headphones and water from our little bottles but I digress.

Why should we care? We should care about what we are doing because in a global economy, we need allies. We need them to be able to trust us. They need to be able to trust us to not stab them in the back. People are constantly making decisions based on cost versus benefit. If they see that we are conducting clandestine operations on both our allies and our foes, why would anyone want to be allied to us? Доверяй, но проверяй is something that we used for the Soviets. Are we now putting Germany (and possibly France, we'll wait for that to emerge) in the same category as the Soviets?

This madness and scope creep will greatly hurt us and our interests in the long run. Do we want to be the "beginning of the end of times" generation? Please stop this madness.